My life in sex: ‘The chill of mortality made sex a defiant act’

‘I knew how fundamental being taken over by pleasure was to forgiving my body.’
Illustration: Lo Cole for the Guardian

When my first breast cancer appeared in my 20s, we were newly married and determined that our sex life would endure, simply because we wanted it to. We had sex when I was bald from chemo, with a drain from my armpit, with new surgical scars. The chill of mortality made sex a defiant, triumphant act.

When a second, shocking tumour appeared 18 years later, I knew how fundamental that experience of being taken over by pleasure was to forgiving my body, or at least making peace with it. After I was booked for a double mastectomy with an immediate reconstruction, we still had sex. But we instinctively withdrew from my breasts, protecting ourselves, the counsellor said, from the upcoming loss.

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Stuck recuperating on the couch, watching reruns of glossy American dramas, I ordered stick-on nipples and bras that the women in House or NCIS: LA might wear. I expected the loss of sensation in my new breasts. What I didn’t anticipate was the loss of sensation in my belly, where they’d taken the tissue to make the new breasts. I didn’t realise how central the area, from my hips up to my carefully re-planted belly button, was to the friction and sweet heat of sex.

We are still determined. My new breasts look fabulous in the leopard print, the purple mesh, the black lace. The bras and stick-on nipples are fun, but ultimately a distraction. Heat and skin sensations are gone, but I can feel pressure. What is essential, what has endured, is the delight of nakedness against nakedness, pressed together.

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